


All Men Should Strive

by factorielle



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Blow Jobs, First Time Blow Jobs, M/M, No Aftercare, Self-Discovery, Sexual Identity, Shower Sex, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 19:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2037351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factorielle/pseuds/factorielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teach, guide, protect: those are an upperclassman's duties as Kasamatsu understands them.</p><p>Nowhere is it specified whether receiving blowjobs in the name of self-knowledge falls anywhere on that spectrum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Men Should Strive

Yukio was going into his fifth three-pointers rep when the storm broke, shattering what little concentration he’d managed to muster in the past couple of hours. He watched the ball bounce high against the backboard and to the other side, heaved a deep sigh, and grabbed another ball from the cage.

He scored six points off the next nine shots, his worst average in practice since the year had started, and gave the entire afternoon up as wasted.

In truth, he should have cleaned up and left over an hour ago. It was one thing to insist on persistence through difficulty, and another entirely to run head first at a wall until your skull cracked. If he’d caught any of his players wearing themselves out this way, they would have been in for an in-depth lecture and, time permitting, restricted to body conditioning for a couple of weeks.

But there was nobody to make these decisions for him, and the air had been muggy all day, wearing on both his body and spirit. He’d thought practice might help clear his head, which he should have understood was not to be as soon as he’d found the locker room open, _again_.

Three weeks to the Interhigh and he was kept on babysitting duty because of half a dozen second-year twerps who either couldn’t be bothered to clean up after themselves or were still acting out against the rise of a first-year to the starting team.

So that was another thing to do tomorrow, another item on a list he could barely handle as it was: find out who had been supposed to lock up and give yet another speech on responsibility, reliability, and possibly team spirit. Yukio was sorely tempted to ask Kobori to take care of it, but he was getting used to this. By tomorrow, it would seem tedious instead of exhausting.

For now, the only thing he needed to face was the storm.

There were fifty meters of open space between the gym and the locker room; even with a sprint, Yukio was drenched by the time he got to the door, and clicked his tongue in annoyance when the combination lock refused to open on the first try.

The air inside was still heavy, almost oppressive. Yukio stripped quickly, put his clothes and shoes into a pair of plastic bags that he shoved back into his locker. Only then, when he wouldn’t drip all over the floor, did he go and open the windows. There was little enough wind that the rain shouldn’t be able to get inside, and it gave, if nothing else, the illusion of fresh air. Besides, the sound was soothing, rainfall almost drowning out the cheerful cries of other sports teams as they got out of practice and tried to make their way home without liquefying.

It had hardly been among his priorities, but practicing alone on a day off also meant that Yukio could get to the best, most coveted shower stall without feeling like he was abusing his position. The water started beating down on his shoulders the moment he pressed the button, and for a moment he stood unmoving under the spray, relishing the pressure and heat of it on his overworked muscles.

He could have used a proper massage right about now, but as soon as he got home there was homework waiting, on top of the training program and the punishment he was going to have to lay on the second-years if they kept up the passive-aggressive crap. He hadn’t been pulling his weight with the housework lately either; a couple of batches of laundry were well overdue.

For lack of time, there was only one thing to do to attempt to relax, and no better time or place to do it. He closed his eyes, and wrapped his fingers tight around his dick.

His body reacted in all the expected ways to the practiced touch, but he found, with a tired lack of surprise, that there was very little actual pleasure in it. His mind kept drifting back to every single source of worry: the last Interhigh and the next, the second-year twits and his own regulars. Having pledged his strength and rebounds to the noble goal of defeating Seirin in the Interhigh, Hayakawa had seen his determination shattered by the results of Tokyo's prefectural tournament. He was picking himself up, but no amount of rationalizing about Seirin’s many shortcomings could completely crush the current _of they beat us and they still fell so short_ that had coursed through the rest of the team.

Yukio gritted his teeth and tried stroking himself faster, eyes clenched tight in his effort, but the rush of excitement wasn’t coming, the sensation remaining purely mechanical. Even Kise had been quieter lately, never so distracted as to hinder practice but noticeable all the same. Yet another problem Yukio was going to have to deal with sooner rather than later, and one he just wanted to push out of his mind for the five minutes it’d take him to--

He heard a gasp.

For a whole second, Yukio pretended he hadn’t heard, that he was still alone and momentarily free of his responsibilities, but reality crashed in quickly enough. He opened his eyes to find Kise standing there naked, hair dripping, and staring in a very unsubtle manner.

"What," Yukio snarled, making no move to cover himself.

Kise’s eyes snapped back up. "I, huh. I went running. And I got caught in the storm?" he said. That was Kise all over, answering questions Yukio would never have cared to ask. "It shouldn’t last long though, so I dropped by for a shower and a change of clothes."

It was tacit wisdom, passed on by osmosis from generation to generation: if you needed to take a shower during off-peak hours and happened to walk onto a teammate taking care of business, you didn’t do anything about it. You didn’t look, you didn’t say a word. Maybe a nod to acknowledge their presence if you absolutely had to, but then you walked past, tried to make extra noise while scrubbing yourself clean and left as soon as possible.

Only that lesson had apparently not been passed down, so now on top of everything else Yukio had to tutor the freshmen in locker room etiquette.

"So go take your shower," he snapped. "What are you still standing here for?"

"Right, yeah," Kise said, eyes a little too wide as he stared intently at Yukio’s face. "Shower. Yes. I’ll…" He gestured vaguely toward the other stalls, hesitated, then bolted at last.

The shower furthest from his turned on a few seconds later, and Yukio sighed. So much for getting a break. But it wasn’t like it had been all that good anyway, even if his body did not seem to have taken the hint that playtime was over yet.

Yukio grabbed his shampoo bottle. He was in the middle of pouring some into his hand when his peripheral vision caught something. He turned back, and here Kise was again, completely wet this time and standing at the very edge of the stall, shuffling his feet.

"Do you mind?" Yukio asked, eyebrows raised. He would have hit Kise for good measure, but something about him was off, hesitant in a way Yukio didn’t think he’d ever seen. Something to be careful about.

"There’s…" Kise stopped, clenched his fists, then looked up at him. "I need some help. Please."

"Can’t it wait five minutes?" Yukio made sure to snap the bottle cap close before he set it down. Kise bit his lip and leaned back, distancing himself without actually moving away.

He glanced down again.

Yukio valiantly ignored the way it made his whole body heat up. "Kise!" What the hell?

Kise’s tongue flicked out for a split second. "There’s something I need to make sure of," he said, his eyes darting between Yukio’s face and his dick, which was still not giving any sign of getting with the program. "About myself."

Or maybe Yukio was the one who was slow to understand.

He could still see the redness where Kise had been biting his lip, and he was the one who had to drag his eyes up this time, to find Kise looking right at him. He didn’t say _please_ again, just stood there waiting as if he’d just made a completely reasonable request, and now Yukio was feeling the rush he’d been chasing, the heat in his limbs that couldn’t in any way be attributed to the shower.

Fuck, he was probably blushing.

"You want to watch?" he asked slowly, making every effort to sound collected and in control and not completely blindsided.

Kise shook his head. "That’s not…" he pinched his lips.

 _That’s not enough_ , Yukio understood. Too many days of Kise acting unlike himself, and now this. Trust, in a way he hadn’t ever anticipated or wanted, but this wasn’t something he could just walk away from.

Enough of him didn’t want to, anyway.

"Okay," he breathed, and didn’t wait for Kise’s reaction before he leaned against the side of the stall, pressing his shoulders to the wall, more exposed than he ever remembered being. "Do what you need to do."

Kise fell so hard that Yukio winced in sympathy. He crossed the distance on his knees, staring with the kind of unwavering attention he usually gave the plays he wanted to commit to memory; Yukio tilted his head up. The last thing he needed would be to see that expression on the court and be brought right back here. He couldn’t get distracted.

The first touch was light, fingertips at the crease of his thigh making the muscle jump, and Yukio slammed the palms of his hands against the wall, smearing shampoo over the tiling.

The fingers withdrew. "Sorry," Kise whispered, and without even looking Yukio already knew he was pulling back.

"It’s fine," he ground out, staring hard at the ceiling. "Just surprised. It’s fine." _Keep going_ didn’t quite make it past his lips, but Kise must have understood him anyway, the way he came back to trail his hands across Yukio’s skin, hips and abdomen and thighs.

Even then the touch felt tentative, exploratory, and Yukio wanted to scream at Kise. Yukio always wanted to scream at Kise, but usually he was entitled to. This, here, wasn’t about him, and so what if Kise’s hands on him only made him more agitated, made his muscles twitch in unexpected ways and his hands scrabble against the tiles for some semblance of purchase? He'd sort himself out later, somehow. This, now, was solely about Kise, that much had been obvious enough. Yukio had happened to be there and apparently good enough, nothing personal about it and he had no right to expect—

Kise licked him.

One long stroke, like a melting popsicle in the middle of summer, and Yukio had a second to feel self-conscious about not having scrubbed himself clean before Kise’s lips were wrapping around the head of his cock.

He hissed. "Teeth."

Kise made a contrite sound, and then there was no scraping anymore, only heat and suction and the weight of Kise’s hands on his hips, as if he needed to hold himself back from falling onto Yukio’s cock. As if he was enjoying this more than he’d meant to, which— Yukio could relate, even though all he had to do was stand there, lean against the soothing coolness of the wall, try not to let his knees give out as Kise sucked him with soft hungry moans from the back of his throat that Yukio felt more than he heard. He barely noticed Kise letting go of his hips; he did notice, did look, when Kise’s fingers curled around his wrist, brought his hand to his head.

Wet, Kise’s hair wasn’t soft or shiny or golden, but Yukio wove his fingers through it, and something in Kise’s posture seemed to loosen. He made as striking a sight on the floor as anyone would imagine, knees wide apart and arms hanging limp at his sides, not even twitching toward the cock brushing against his stomach.

Yukio had thought, months ago, that what his ace needed most was a guiding hand — or fist, on occasion. He’d already applied himself to that role.

So he tightened his grip now, immobilizing Kise’s head — but not his tongue, not the flicks of it up his slit that had shivers bolting up Yukio’s spine and turning into unbearable heat. When he twitched his hips forward Kise’s mouth opened for him, eager, but he didn’t try to move against Yukio’s grip, as if he’d just take anything.

Yukio’s left hand was shaking when he brought it to Kise’s head as well, but all Kise did was spread his legs a little further apart, suck a little harder, adjust to the thrusting — take take _take_ as the pleasure Yukio had been so desperate for curled inside him until he couldn’t hold it in anymore.

He tried to pull back, but his grip must have loosened because Kise mewled and went with him, swallowing and still sucking until it became too much and Yukio had to push him away.

He slumped against the wall, might even have slid down it to give his legs some rest, but Kise was sitting on his heels now, fists clenched on his thighs, eyes wide and staring at nothing. He was still hard, hadn’t touched himself the whole time and still he was sitting there, waiting.

For instructions, even now?

Yukio reached out again, slowly, slid his fingers down to the nape of Kise's neck. It didn’t take much. One tug, and then it was more guiding than pulling as Kise leaned forward again until he was pressing his forehead against Yukio’s thigh as if he was trying to bury into it.

"It’s okay," Yukio said, voice low, mouth dry. Not _you’re okay_ , although he wished that was the kind of order he could give and be obeyed. "Go on." If there was one kind of instruction that Kise always took to heart, it was permission.

It was no different this time: his knees spread further apart as he reached between his legs. There wasn’t much to see beyond the rhythmic jerks of Kise’s elbow but Yukio watched, anyway. He was the one who’d ordered it, after all.

His attempt to release his hold on Kise’s neck got him a plaintive whine in response. He tightened his hold instead, and Kise’s movements got faster, as did his breathing against Yukio’s skin. It couldn’t have lasted longer than a couple of minutes, but every second of it was an eternity until Kise’s body froze, and held, and held— and then he was falling back onto his heels, head bent low.

Yukio let go of him.

Kise didn’t move, didn't make a sound.

Outside, the rain had stopped. There was nothing but his breathing and Kise’s to break the silence.

Another order, then, and Yukio could only be thankful that he’d already learned how to carry on for others until he was left alone, sheltered and unseen and free to let himself be overwhelmed.

Some of the shampoo he’s poured an eon ago had made it into Kise’s hair. He hadn't even noticed. "Go take your shower," he said, "your hair is a mess."

He cursed himself for it the moment the words were out of his mouth, but it seemed to kick Kise into motion, at least: he nodded, scrambled to a standing position before fleeing the stall. Five seconds later, Yukio heard his shower start again.

He turned the water in his own stall and went through the motions, lathering himself with soap quick and efficient. When he looked down at the shampoo bottle, he found it had been kicked to the side at some point, and all his composure shattered.

For a moment Yukio stood still as he tried to gather the strands of his thoughts into some sort of coherent whole, preferably one in which breathing could be made easier.

But everywhere he looked all he could think of was Kise on his knees, pleading, waiting, and he didn’t have the leisure to wonder how well he’d handled that, to identify how much of it had been granting Kise’s request, and how much… not.

He rinsed himself, gave up on washing his hair, and left the showers without even glancing into the occupied stall.

Kise, true to form, had managed to shed his running gear in such a way that it looked like the room was occupied by an entire team. Yukio tossed a sock to the side to leave some space for his own stuff. He dried himself quickly and put on his school uniform like so much body armor. He was patting his hair with the towel when Kise’s shower stopped.

It didn’t start again.

In under ten seconds Yukio was in his shoes and out the door, all bags abandoned with the combination lock. There was nothing courageous or dignified about running down the stairs like he was escaping from a fire, but the thought of still being there when Kise walked out, of scrambling for a way to fill the silence, felt unbearable.

He needed more time. Just a little.

Outside, the cloud cover had mostly cleared out, leaving no reminder of the storm but the occasional rainbow in a puddle. The air felt lighter. Half an hour earlier it would have been a relief; now, it was barely a data point.

Yukio turned left toward the main yard without much of a conscious thought. No point in going far; he’d have to go back for his things anyway. At least this way Kise got to choose to leave instead of getting ambushed right outside the showers, and Yukio could pretend he’d left for Kise’s own good, even if it solved nothing in the long run. They had to talk about this, or put it behind them somehow.

 _Three weeks to the Interhigh_ , came the traitorous thought. It made him want to— punch a wall, or stomp in a puddle, or maybe throw up.

He shook it away, and continued meandering through the school until his lack of trajectory took him past one of the rare vending machines that hadn't been emptied out yet. Yukio hesitated, patted his pockets and found a thousand yen note; plenty enough for a couple of drinks. About twenty percent of the offer got rotated three times a year or so, but the core drinks had remained the same since Yukio had entered Kaijou. Still, he looked at each of the drinks in turn before buying two bottles of sweet green tea.

They felt pleasantly chilly in his hands, heavy and familiar; nothing more than a prop, maybe, and he still didn’t know what to say or do or even feel, but much like the uniform, it felt a little like support.

"It won’t get any easier," he told himself, then rolled his eyes and made a note that this piece of advice wasn’t quite as encouraging as he might have thought. He turned around anyway, even picked up the pace a bit on his way back.

Both the windows in the locker room were closed.  When Yukio turned the corner, Kise was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing his warm-up tracksuit, had his wrists crossed behind his back as he pushed himself off the wall again and again, looking up at the sky all the while. His hair looked perfect, if a little damp.

Kise may not have earned himself a raptor nickname for it, but he still had some of the best situational awareness skills Yukio had ever encountered. There was no way he didn’t know he wasn’t alone anymore, but he continued staring up until Yukio poked him in the side with one of the bottles.

"Did you lock up?" That much was easy.

"Yes," Kise said, handing him his bags, and "thank you," as he twisted off the cap before taking a long gulp. Yukio caught himself staring at his throat, and had to avert his eyes when Kise sloshed the liquid around in his mouth before swallowing. He drank, too. For a moment it all felt almost normal.

Normal, where they’d head to the station together and talk about anything easy, basketball or food or music.

But there was only so long Yukio could run away. "Did you find your answer?" he asked after they’d passed the school gate.

Kise glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "Yes," he said with hollow certainty. "Thank you."

 _You’re welcome_ did not feel like the proper answer here, so Yukio stayed quiet and waited for more. There usually was more.

"I’m sorry I’ve been distracted in practice lately," Kise went on. "But things are clearer now, so it won’t…" He took a deep breath and stopped there.

"You haven’t been so bad," Yukio said. "Don’t worry about that."

They were both silent until the overpass.

"You know how sometimes you want something so badly you can almost taste it, but when you finally get it you realize that maybe it had been more exciting to want?" Kise asked, looking down at the uninterrupted flow of cars.

 _Just you wait_ , six-year-old Yukio-chan had yelled to the older kids who wouldn't let him play with them, _one day I'll have my own team and I'll be captain and I'll make all the decisions_. "Yeah. I know."

Kise nodded. "I thought it might be like that. Just a weird... fixation, I guess, to get out of my system," he said, and in his mind's eye Yukio saw him wide-eyed and panting and _wrecked_ on the bathroom floor. Kise made a sound that had probably been meant as a snort. "But in the end it’s still better to know, right? What I am."

Yukio’s fingers clenched tight on the strap of his bag.

A group of girls in street clothes called Kise’s name from across the street as they passed the bookstore, and a flip switched: suddenly there was a smile that could almost pass for genuine, and straighter posture, and Kise was waving back as happily as he ever had in practice. "What you are," Yukio ground out, "is a frivolous brat with a head full of cotton candy." _And Kaijou's ace, and my responsibility, and a wonder to behold._ "I don't see how this is news." Kise must have beamed at them: he could swear one of the girls had just fainted, or pretended to. Sometimes he suspected the gaggles of fans of performing for Kise as much as he did for them, and wasn’t that an appalling waste of time for everyone involved.

"Senpai," Kise whined when he'd turned back, as if trying to prove Yukio's point for him. "I just had a life-ruining revelation and you're joking around!"

Yukio really wasn’t. "Is it? Life-ruining?" Or even a revelation? Kise did take pride in self-knowledge. Yukio had thought his change in behavior was linked to Touou's crushing victory over Seirin, but how long had Kise really been worried about this?

Kise tilted his head toward the girls, who were still watching his every step and giggling at each other. "I feel like I'm lying to them now," he said, once again quietly serious even as he completely avoided the question.

Of all the preposterous bullshit. "You were already lying to them before," Yukio pointed out. "The ones who keep coming to see you play? You act like each of them is your favorite and I know more of their names than you do." Partly because a frightening proportion of them were in his year, but the point remained valid. From Yukio’s admittedly inexpert perspective, Kise’s behavior with women was marginally less irksome than Moriyama’s, but that still wasn’t saying much.

"I can't remember everyone's names, senpai! All that matters is that they don’t notice I’m faking it." He blinked. "Oh."

Yukio rolled his eyes. "Exactly. The way you treat your fans has nothing to do with anything. And figuring something out about yourself doesn’t suddenly make you a worse person." Or so he had to hope. He was the one who’d had his hands fisted in Kise’s hair, and how little had he hesitated?

Kise pouted. Actually pouted, complete with the sad eyes that always made Yukio want to kick him and should never have come as a relief. It lasted all the way inside the station and down the stairs. "That sounds like I was already terrible to begin with, senpai."

"So what if you were?" Yukio asked. "I'm your team captain, not the judge of your worth as a human being." No single person should be, but especially not him. All he had to offer right now were the same things he had since the beginning. "I’ve told you before. The rules don't change to accommodate your circumstances. You come to practice, you work hard, you show respect, and you don't start trouble."

Kise had been keeping to that set of instructions pretty well, especially considering where he'd started. A few of the non-regular upperclassmen had fallen to his charms and waived the need for him to address them properly, but Kise at least had the sense not to do it when Yukio was within earshot. "Everything else…" _Doesn’t matter_ , he wanted to say, but that was the rare call that wasn’t for him to make.

A train was coming in. He continued staring at Kise. "Anyone starts trouble with you, for any reason, it falls under my responsibility and I will deal with them. So you come to me. All right?"

His fingers were turning white on the strap of his sports bag, but Kise’s eyes were crinkling at the corners, and the smile was not brilliantly shiny but it was there. "I’ve got no complaints," Kise said, which was roughly appropriate, but still made Yukio frown at the wording.

Then Kise bowed deep, back straight and hands to his side. "I’m in your care, Kasamatsu-senpai. I’ll see you tomorrow at practice."

"Damn right you are," Yukio muttered, watching Kise slide between the closing doors. His own train drove into the station as Kise’s left; Yukio hesitated. The girls would likely still be standing in front of the bookstore, might even remember that he’d walked past with their idol, and he had no idea in what section to even start looking for information or guidance.

The doors opened.

Yukio turned, and went back up the stairs. 

**Author's Note:**

> > All men should strive  
> to learn before they die  
> what they are running from, and to, and why.
> 
> ~James Thurber
> 
> ([tumblr](http://factorielle.tumblr.com))


End file.
